


Shiver Now My Fractious Skin

by annecoulmanross



Category: The Terror (TV 2018), The Terror - Dan Simmons
Genre: Amputation Mentioned, Canon Compliant, Established Relationship, Flashbacks, Frostbite, Hurt/Comfort, Injury Recovery, M/M, Missing Scene, Sleepy Cuddles, Trans Dundy, Trans James Fitzjames, Trans Male Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-21
Updated: 2020-11-21
Packaged: 2021-03-09 21:27:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,451
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27652729
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/annecoulmanross/pseuds/annecoulmanross
Summary: After the removal of a few frostbitten toes, Lt. Henry Thomas “Dundy” Le Vesconte receives some much-needed warmth from his friend and captain – who, it turns out, is very much in need of comfort in return.For the Terror Bingo prompt “Vulnerability,” and for the Trans Terror Week prompt “Barrow’s Boys.”
Relationships: Commander James Fitzjames/Lt Henry T. D. Le Vesconte
Comments: 20
Kudos: 31
Collections: Trans Terror Week





	Shiver Now My Fractious Skin

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to @[frederickdesvoeux](https://archiveofourown.org/users/doomdxys/pseuds/frederickdesvoeux) for this idea, and to @[kaserl](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kaserl) for the beautiful beta work!

**vulnerability** (noun) 1787, from Latin _vulnerabilis_ "capable of being wounded," from Latin _vulnerare_ "to wound, hurt, injure, maim," from _vulnus_ "wound," perhaps from Proto-Indo-European *wele- (2) "to strike." 

“An unreal _Boy’s Own_ atmosphere reigned aboard the _Erebus_. ‘We are very happy. Never was more so in my life,’ Fitzjames wrote. ‘You have no idea how happy we all feel – how determined we all are to be frozen and how anxious to be among the ice.’”

– _Barrow’s Boys_ (1998) by Fergus Fleming

When the harrowing procedure is over, the doctor sends Dundy off, full up with medicine but without so much as a crutch to help him hobble back to his cabin on his newly-ruined feet.

It’s an ordeal, having to navigate the sloping under-deck of _Erebus_ with so few of his toes left, and the others still numb and smarting. Those men who are aboard are all elsewhere, somehow. But Dundy prefers it this way – there’s no one to see him stumble, shutting his eyes against the pain that lances up his legs. He would have brushed off any help, had it been offered.

Dundy comes at last to his own cabin, cold as always. Still, it’s a relief to slide the door shut behind him, like his own eyelids; and fall, sightlessly, into his sheets. How carefully Bridgens had made the bed; how swiftly Dundy undoes all his good work. The blankets are chill, and they tangle in Dundy’s grip as he struggles to push them down to the end of the bed, there, in the dark of the cabin that remains washed in shadow, for Dundy hasn’t bothered with a candle.

In the darkness, his senses are heightened – he can hear _Erebus_ settling around him, can hear the noise of distant cannon-fire over on _Terror_ , where a munitions-test had been scheduled. The booming sounds of the artillery seem irregular, to Dundy’s ear, and they go on far too long, until it drums like thunder through Dundy’s laudanum-heavy dreams.

He must be dreaming, mustn’t he? There are faint shouts and screams that sound like the inside of Dundy’s head on bad days. That there is pain washing over him even past the limits of consciousness seems an injustice, but surely Dundy is not truly awake.

Nevertheless, all of it is far, far away. And Dundy is so, so tired.

The edge of sleep itself seems almost in Dundy’s grasp when there’s a soft knock at the cabin door.

Dundy attempts to open his eyes, twisting himself in the sheets. “‘Lo?”

“Hullo,” comes the echo.

Candle-light catches the opening door, and a tall shadow edges inside, limned in it. Dundy blinks in the brightness – what seems like brightness to him, at least. This, too, is dreamlike. “James?”

“You’ve fallen asleep in your clothes,” James says, dry disappointment dripping from the words.

Dundy nods. “Too cold,” he says, suddenly shy. “And my – my foot…”

He’s silenced by James, approaching. James’s fingers, a light touch against his temple, tripping over his forehead, his greying fringe. James, who already knows what Dundy’s lost, of course; whose caress comforts, tenders an apology Dundy hadn’t thought to need until he does. His eyes slip closed, but then James’s hand falls away.

“Hush,” James says.

Dundy realizes that he had been humming, quiet little tune-less hums that have turned into whining now that James has lifted his hand. But soon enough, James’s glove-warm fingertips return to his face, touching the places where Dundy’s skin is still as-yet unwarmed, still stiff with cold, hours and hours though he’s been aboard, out of the winter wind.

James – as he settles on the bunk railing, as he unbuttons Dundy’s waistcoat – is nothing but gentle, his fingers brushing over Dundy’s belly and up across his chest.

Even Bridgens would not be permitted this liberty – it was one of the reasons they’d kept him over from _Clio_ , pulled strings to bring him to _Erebus_ , that the kindly old steward has never once questioned that his two young charges never let him undress them beyond coat and cravat.

But James is not Bridgens – James is like Dundy.

James is permitted anything.

Certainly, Dundy thinks, James is allowed to undress him, cold though he is, yet. It’s not so very frigid when James finally shifts him down into just his shirt-sleeves, sits down beside him in the small bunk, pressing his hip to Dundy’s side.

At this angle, the candle’s light creeps up over James’s face at last, and Dundy catches sight of a sickly dark bruise that shadows the arch of James’s high cheekbone.

Reaching up, Dundy runs his finger around the edge of the injury, rushing up across James’s jaw, reddening over his cheek. “What happened, James?” Dundy asks.

“There was an attack,” James says, sadness in the sound of it. “On _Terror_.”

Dundy startles; would bolt upright but for James’s hand at his collar. “The creature.”

James nods. “And Crozier –” James coughs. “Captain Crozier is… indisposed. Nothing to do with the creature,” he reassures, then releases a heavy sigh. “But I have the command now.”

A high silence hovers between them, cold in a way their silences never are.

When Dundy touches James’s cheek, it’s wet with tears.

“Oh Jas.”

The last time James had been given command of an expedition entire, it had been a celebration, a bright gilded thing – albeit at the end of a bloody war that they’d both agreed to burnish into something more glorious than what it’d been in truth – but the command of _Clio_ had been a blessing. He and James had toasted in the sunlight and let the men run rampant and then snuck themselves off to the commander’s cabin and christened it in style, with Dundy straddling James’s thighs, nipping at his neck while James pressed clever fingers against him and brought him off. Their laughter had echoed over the cabin’s white walls when Dundy had pushed James down, then, and leaned happily into the heat of him, heavy with hope, hitching breath just a little unsteady. And James had begged, bold and wondrous, for Dundy’s fingers inside him for the first time, and Dundy, frantic, had followed his instructions without a single second thought.

What Dundy would give for that day back… anything, anything at all.

Well. Anything but James.

But for the price of a couple of toes, for the cramped discomfort of sharing a lieutenant’s small berth on certain stolen nights for another year, or two?

In a heartbeat.

To see James’s lithesome smile, the thin lines around his mouth deepening with delight as his dark eyes linger on Dundy, as he’d done early in this very voyage, before the burden of command had come to rest, broken, on his shoulders?

To see that smile again, Dundy’d give near anything.

“C’mere,” Dundy says, pulling at James’s parka. “Get this thing off, get down here.”

James does as Dundy demands and Dundy marvels at the fact that he’s somehow become _de facto_ in command of the expedition, in this small space at least, ordering the captain around on a whim. It’s a bitter little thought, but it imparts a needed sort of confidence, brings Dundy up on an elbow to steal away James’s coat and draw him close by the hip.

Soon enough, James is down to his white knits, soft and smart. Dundy would make him take those off as well, but James shivers, and isn’t Dundy supposed to be the one who lost a battle to the cold today? So James falls into his arms half-dressed, distress sitting on his brow until Dundy presses a kiss there and James finally curls around him at last, hands coming up hazy to cradle Dundy’s ribs.

“I’m sorry,” James says, his beautiful dark hair falling over a face still full of tension, still cold.

Dundy pokes at James’s cheek, far away enough from the bruise that James doesn’t even flinch; James knows that as drugged-up as Dundy might be, he wouldn’t hurt him. “Stop that,” Dundy says, no heat to it. “James, ’m the one who stayed out in the cold too long.”

James’s voice is soft, frayed. “I brought you here, though.”

There’s no answer to that. No answer, at least, that isn’t the kind of Bible-talk that Dundy hates and that makes James go all boyish and nostalgic and solemn, which isn’t the goal here. No answer but _Whither thou goest I will go_ , said more like a promise than a prayer.

So Dundy simply kisses him, equally soft, and frayed, and sure. And when James mewls into his mouth and makes Dundy’s heart beat fast again, it’s almost like being warm, almost like he’s never been hurt at all.

**Author's Note:**

>  **Source Notes:** The title of this fic comes from the song “Coward’s Son,” by The Ballroom Thieves, which is – dare I say it – the ideal Dundy song.
> 
>  **Author’s Notes:** In some small thematic ways, this is (very loosely) a companion piece to “[Our Young Hearts Fade Into the Flood.](https://archiveofourown.org/works/26199823)”


End file.
